Walmart Is No Angel, But It's Not The Devil Either

The volume of hate mail that I've received recently suggests that I've lost a few friends. My mistake was saying something nice about Walmart in public. I was called a lot of things - many of which I am not able to disclose here. But suffice it to say, I don’t expect to make it on most readers’ list of holiday well wishes. Still, while I don’t think what I've said in Walmart’s defense was that egregious, I do feel an obligation to explain my point further- at least based on the responses, which suggests that I was misunderstood.

It seems in our constant need for revenge against Walmart and (for that matter) any big establishment, we often overlook the role that we play as adults that leads us to our circumstances. I wonder, is it the responsibility of Walmart or any corporation to serve as our moral compass? Is this the message we want to send to our children? For instance, Walmart is in business to generate a profit – a word that is often interpreted as awful. But I don’t know of any company where making money is not the objective.

This is a selfmade image from the english wikipedia. The photographer has uploaded it as GFDL (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In Walmart’s situation however, revenues have not been that impressive. The company is coming off a quarter where it saw only 3.4% growth while traffic at its store arrived flat. What’s more, its comps arrived below its range of guidance. This is the metric that tracks the performance of stores that have been opened at least one year. Even more disappointing is that the company has not done well recently in terms of profitability, an area which saw its gross margins decline by 13 basis points.

In some companies, a performance such as this would be enough to prompt discussions of layoffs. Instead Walmart decided it was going to open its doors earlier on Thanksgiving day - hoping to generate enough revenue to help offset what might be an otherwise disappointing current quarter. My response - so what! Was this really that egregious of a decision? While I do appreciate there are other lingering concerns. Many of which have lead to the recent protests. Still, I’m also willing to consider that corporations have a responsibility to perform for their shareholders. Remember them? They are not asking for sympathy. But they do help infuse the company with capital that help make (in some instances) payroll as well as healthcare benefits.

As I pointed out in my recent article, Walmart was not the only retailer that decided to open its stores on Thanksgiving. Target, Kmart, Toy R Us, Best Buy and many other prominent outlets sought to take advantage of the Christmas shopping season a little earlier than usual. Each of these stores are fearing that the popularity of Amazon and its expanded offerings will eat into their foot traffic. This is a way to fight back. So the idea that Walmart is the devil for doing what many others are also doing is a bit unfair.

Bottom Line

While I do understand the labor complaints offered by Our Walmart, the union-backed group which helped organize the post-Thanksgiving walk-out, I worry that sometimes we might jump too quickly into conclusions without fully understanding both sides. Walmart is certainly not an angel in this situation at all. But I disagree at the smearing of the company’s name for doing things that the entire retail industry is known to do.